


"Forever"

by calleryfield



Category: Pandora Hearts
Genre: Drabble, Gen, POV First Person, Retrace 74, Thought Projection, i'm not sure thought projection is the right thing, ventwrite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-13
Updated: 2018-06-13
Packaged: 2019-05-21 15:34:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14918039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calleryfield/pseuds/calleryfield
Summary: [Drabble] A piece that takes place towards the end of Retrace 74 when Gilbert shoots Oz. Oz's thought process in all that had happened and all that he learned.





	"Forever"

“May I stay by your side, no matter what happens?”

“No matter how much time passes, no matter how much our situations change, I… I always want to be your servant.”

Do you remember those words you said to me from ten years ago? I laughed at the notion: “forever.” I even told you that I never believed in such a thing. Told you that I doubt our relationship as master and valet — or our friendship, rather — would last that long, believing that even you too will soon disappear from me. Because that’s just the way I believed I was meant to be treated.

Yet, you insisted.

“I will never betray you. And I won’t let you get hurt. Because you are my master.”

When you said that, a part of me felt light, and I began to hope for better ever so slightly. I wouldn’t allow myself to get my hopes up far too high for my own good. No, I was too afraid of being let down because such a promise sounded too good to be true.

That day, when I struck you down, my blade covered in your blood and seeing you faint before me, I called myself foolish in trying to believe in that “forever.”  I wanted to scream, turn back time to fix this, and save you from my stupid mistake. Perhaps I really am cursed to be filth — a sin — for killing the only other person that wanted to be close to me.

But I was wrong.

Soon, I found myself immersed in the Abyss, desperate to stay alive and make that contract to leave. Soon after, I awoke to light so blinding that it hurt my eyes. But my eyes began to adjust to this new light, after being in dark for such a long time, and my eyes quickly fell on the figure right beside me: you.

Even when you called yourself a different name, trying to hide from me, you stayed right by my side from the moment I came back from the Abyss after ten years have passed.

Perhaps that’s why I accepted it completely when Raven turned out to be you in the first place. Perhaps that was why I didn’t mind putting myself through that danger when I saw your blood-thirsty, revenge-seeking golden eyes peering down at me, pointing the gun at me: because I know that despite the ten years that passed, despite me hurting you before I disappeared, you were still by my side when I woke up and you’ll remain by my side from then on.

And I didn’t mind being scolded about that dumb move. I was just glad that it was true if it meant that you were proving me wrong about the meaning of “forever.”

It acted like a stepping stone for me to walk that path to believe in that “forever”: to learn to trust when I stopped wanting to trust and to be myself without the fear of wasting another’s time. Although that was Alice’s doing, and I’m grateful for what she allowed me to feel: she was able to allow me to feel that trust in the first place: to grow and stand by your side without worry—

“Your hands were empty from the start.”

No. That can’t be right. I bicker in my head against that voice that rings too loudly that it even blinds my sight to reality.

Those lessons that I’ve learned. The people that I learned to love. The person that stayed by my side all this time.

“Nothing more than an illusion.”

I wanted to shut my ears, tune it out and become deaf to what I heard. It… can’t be right, right? It can’t be right. It can’t be right. It can’t be right.

Not after all that I’ve learned. Not after the many impressions that they left on me. Not after I’ve learned to be alright with just being _me_ — and being me with them.That I’m not a burden. That I’m not a sinful existence.

So… why?

“Because you’re nothing. Because you’ll destroy everything!”

But I’m not! I won’t! I don’t want to!

“You’re a chain. The ‘B-Rabbit’ of destruction.”

Stop. Stop. I don’t want to kill. I don’t want to kill. I don’t want to kill!

I’m not a chain. I’m not B-Rabbit. I’m me. I’m _me._ I’m….me.

“Don’t forget that.”

That sense of self that I had once grasped escapes me, and I try to chase after it. I had chased after it for so long that the desperation is finally setting in as soon I had lost it, and it’s suddenly like clawing through a thicket of bushes. The thorns of the bush are beginning to pierce me, and I can’t do anything but to endure that pain just to find that “self.”

But it seems that the more I search, the more this new identity that I’ve rejected is beginning to cloud me.

Please. I need something consistent… Something that is still the same.

I scream and cry, slamming my hands against the ground. People around yell back and forth, but I can’t seem to make sense of it all. A mess. Everything’s a mess.

No. I can’t give up just yet. Not yet, I think, clawing my way through those bushes in my mind once more.

I stand up with my tired legs and immediately I see you again, just like when you were by my bedside when I awoke from the Abyss.

I call out to you, and you come to protect me, breaking away the worries that I held deep inside because then at least something never changed.

But when the new enemy has spoken, all I hear is a thundering boom in the air and all I could feel is pain in my body.

It hurts all over. It hurts. It hurts as I lie here, fingers intertwined with the grass beneath me. It hurts as the grass slowly stains red from the blood that seeps from the bullet wound. The soil is beginning to soak the red all in. I would have laughed and smiled at the situation a long time ago — I wish I could laugh and smile now.

With this wound, I had almost wished to erase those lessons I learned after all this time from my mind. It seems easier than facing the truth — easier than seeing you pull the trigger.

Or maybe, I really did deserve this in the end after all that I have done...  

“Your hands were empty right from the start.”

I didn’t want to believe it, but…

“Your loved ones, the people you had to protect… Everything you ever held in your hands was nothing more than an illusion.”

“You can never obtain anything…”

…I know.

“Because you will destroy everything!”

I know.

See? Now everything has gone back to the way it used to be.

  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


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